Cartoons: Themes and Lessons: A semiotic analysis

Abstract

The current study is a part of the practical issues of an M.A. thesis entitled: A Semiotic Study of Cartoon Series Favored by Selected Iraqi Kindergarten Children. In spite of the significance of cartoons in the formation of the children’s language and culture as they are the steady audience of cartoons, the researchers noticed that there is a research gap in the studies concerning the language of cartoons. The current study which is qualitative and descriptive in nature aims at identifying the positivity and negativity of the verbal and visual-verbal signs, and deciphering the non-verbal signs in two of the selected episodes of “Tom and Jerry”. The researchers adopted Peirce’s theory in analysis categorizing signs into icons, indexes, and symbols. They depended on the universal six pillars of Character Counts as the criteria of positivity and negativity to tabulate the product of categorization. They found that negativity is the dominant aspect in the two episodes.